Supermarket/Grocery

Boise, Idaho - Associated Grocers of Florida is adopting recall process management technology from Recall InfoLink. Recall InfoLink offers a Web-based product recall management platform that protects brand image and reduces liability for businesses involved in processing recalls.

It improves efficiency by providing standardized messages, automated communications, inventory tracking and reports for compliance efforts.

Minneapolis -- Grocery retailer Roundy’s said it had entered into definitive agreements to sell 18 Rainbow stores in the Minneapolis/St. Paul market to a group of local grocers, including Supervalu.

The sale price is $65 million, and Roundy’s said it is seeking buyers for a remaining nine Rainbow stores so that it can fully exit the Minneapolis/St. Paul market.

The transaction is expected to close during the third quarter of this year.

Washington, D.C. -- Import volume at the nation’s major retail container ports is expected to increase 3.5% in May as negotiators prepare to begin talks on a new contract for West Coast dockworkers, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

Cupertino, Calif. -- Voltage Security announced a new product integration with device manufacturer Uniform Industrial Corp. (UIC) that provides end-to-end data encryption for the retail payments industry, a key technology in light of the recent data breaches. (Chain Store Age will host a Webinar on data security sponsored by Voltage Security, “Lessons Learned: What to Do NOW to Protect Stores Against Data Breaches,” on May 13. Register here.)

Washington, D.C. -- More than two-thirds of U.S. shoppers will buy gift cards during the spring and summer seasons, according to a just-released survey by the Retail Gift Card Association.

Buying occasions include Mother’s Day, graduation and weddings. Key findings of the RGCA spring and summer gift card study, which polled more than 1,100 American shoppers, include:

Mount Laurel, N.J. -- Agilence, a provider of cloud-based exception reporting solutions, announced that the Great Atlantic & Pacific Company has selected Agilence’s Retail 20/20 to enhance its chain-wide effort to reduce shrink and fraud.

Cincinnati -- The Kroger Co. announced that it will be the first in Oregon to deploy a fleet of heavy-duty trucks that run on Liquid Natural Gas (LNG). The 40 trucks will replace 40 diesel trucks currently in use, and are expected to start making store deliveries in the Portland metropolitan area by the end of 2014.

The use of natural gas fuel not only reduces operating costs for vehicles, but also reduces greenhouse gas emissions up to 23% in medium- to heavy-duty vehicles.

One topic that’s been on my mind lately is the growing Hispanic market in the U.S., and what its clout and purchasing power will mean for retailers — and, subsequently, for retail real estate — in the years ahead. “Emerging” is probably too mild of a word to describe the Hispanic market — exploding might be more accurate.